East Magazine

A few fun (and perhaps frightening) facts and figures about democracy — politics, patriotism, and civic participation — on the South Fork.

Across America, community is built around the simple act of getting a fade or flat top — and stories among men are shared as freely as the clippings of hair that fall after the snip, snip of the scissors. On the South Fork, the professionals who cut hair have tales of their own to tell.

Sagaponack Farm Distillery's Gin and juice — their own American gin with a splash of tart rhubarb and sweet currant — is the perfect midsummer cocktail.

Red Horse Market, on the highway at the fringe of East Hampton Village, has seen various incarnations and owners since the 1990s. Now, it's thriving like never before and even expanding to Southampton — driven by one Latino family's resilience, vision, and hard work.

We're spoiled for choice when it comes to ice cream shops. Thoroughly sampling each option can feel like wading through a sea of crumbled-up Heath bars, so we're here to do the hard work of creating a guide for you.

Bruce Collins was a pilot and co-captain on a bunker steamer and shrimp trawlers in the 1950s. He took a camera. The images he created of a lost working-man's life along the eastern and southern coastline are not just invaluable as social history, but stunning in their artistic merit.

The cooler is stocked with Topo Chico and watermelon slices. The umbrella is staked deep into the sand, and you've settled into your sling chair. Now all you need's a good read. Here's our suggestion of a dozen set right here on the South Fork.

From fishing equipment to cassette-tape converters — karaoke machines to clown-shaped cake pans — East End libraries are lending more than just books.

A uniquely American art form fills the air this month and into September, as Hamptons JazzFest returns. But what casual listeners may not know is just how rich the jazz legacy is here.

We hold the following truths to be self-evident and the following rights, for the residents of the South Fork, to be inalienable.

The Wainwrights’ roots run deep on the East End of Long Island. “On my father’s side,” the Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright says, “my family has been in East Hampton for 100 years or something. I have many second and third cousins who live out here.”

The photorealistic swimmer serenely swanning on our red, white, and blue cover is by Elise Remender, an artist who shows her sunshine-soaked paintings — with an old-school-Hollywood Technicolor filter — at the White Room Gallery in East Hampton.

The images from Nat Ward's four-summer informal residency at Ditch Plain resulted not just in a recent exhibition at Second House Museum, but also in a book of photographs, both titled DITCH: MONTAUK, NY 11954.

Meet Anita Fagan: former pharmacy clerk, James Dean fan, and outsider artist.

Edward Tyler Huntting Jr. of Huntting Lane, East Hampton, grew up playing tennis at the Maidstone Club. He was tall and handsome, graduated from East Hampton High School in 1952, and was a Theta Chi fraternity man at Bucknell University. He was a veteran who did two stints in the Army, then worked as an executive salesman on the road between Chicago and San Francisco. He had an acerbic wit. In the 1950s, he was reportedly voted “Number One Bachelor of Chicago.”

Just as victory gardens brought fresh-grown produce to Americans during World War II, the East End Community Organic Farm and Bridge Gardens are two South Fork gardens offering a victory garden vibe.

It may come as a bit of a surprise, but it’s true: The early Americans who arrived here on the South Fork in the 1640s, despite being of Puritan stock, got fairly rowdy each December. Have you heard of wassailing? If you’ve ever been Christmas-caroling the word might ring a bell, from the most famous wassailing tune that remains among the seasonal canon, “Here We Come a-Wassailing.” It is pretty much all that’s left of a centuries-old, possibly millennium-old Yuletime tradition:

Chilled to the bone? We've slurped our way to a definitive list of the best takeout soups on the South Fork. Here's a full week's worth of loving spoonfuls

So, you've given up refined sugar for the good of your health. But... but what in the heck do you eat for a sweet treat when cookie-platter and eggnog season arrives?

There may be a word in Italian for "turkey," sure. (It's "tacchino.") But according to Joe Isidori of Arthur & Sons, roast turkey simply isn't the Italian-American way. When it comes to family gatherings for the winter holidays? Lasagna

Thousands gather to raise money for charity at three polar-bear plunges each winter. The numbers send a chill down your spine.

The holidays are right around the corner and naturally you want not just the perfect present, but one that's easy to gift-wrap, right? There's one natural answer: Books, of course! Here, an actual librarian's helpful hints on titles to please all the loved ones on your list.

The coast is clear, fellow sufferers from seasonal agoraphobia! For those of you who, like many of us, just want to be alone, winter is actually the very best time to enjoy so many of the pleasures of the South Fork.

This time of year, in one of the most beautiful but most expensive places on the planet, holiday gifting calls out for extra-special touches and money-saving methods. Here's how to wrap those presents with love from the East End.

Despite what the poultry pushers over at Butterball might have you believe, turkey isn’t a strictly universal Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner standard in various corners of America — and it definitely wasn’t always on the holiday table here in Bonac.

A wilderness? A suburban neighborhood? East Hampton's answer to the lost Jamestown settlement? Richard Whalen delves deep into the history and lore of the mysterious and beckoning Northwest Woods

A blues talent beyond his years, discovered as a youth here in 2013, gets ready for the big stage. Henry Koepp introduces you (again) to Casey Baron

Some of us, of literary bent, can’t walk past the South End Burying Ground — the cemetery, that is, by Town Pond, the one with the weeping willows — without being reminded of the famous closing lines of James Joyce’s short story The Dead:

Places and populations have personalities, too, and one of the deep-seated quirks of East Hampton is a predilection for pranks. We have a long history of (mostly) harmless mischief.

There’s nothing quite like the sound of the English-handbell choir during the Christmas season at the First Presbyterian Church in East Hampton, when gloved hands ring gleaming bells and chimes at exactly the right moment to create songs that evoke angels.

These are the hands of the community: everyday people who come together to make music — and magic and the holiday spirit.